Ch. 4: The Preparation (p. 20-31)

Thoughts, Vocab, Explanations: 

• "packet" (p. 20)--small boat used for transporting mail (and people, much like the mail coach on which Lorry has traveled to Dover)
• "piscatory" (p. 23)--fishy!  (well: having to do with fishing, or fishermen.  But here it's a great way to say that the town smells strongly of fish.)

• Dover is, if you were wondering, on the English coast just across the Channel from France.

 

•  "filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time" (p. 27)--the notes to this edition inform me that this refers to "lettres de cachet"--essentially, prison sentences that wealthy French nobles could buy for their enemies.  So what Lorry is saying is that Miss Manette's father did not die, but was thrown into prison with no trial or any kind of due process; basically, he disappeared.
  
  
• Wow, Jarvis is not great with people or emotions.  He wasn't far from the truth when he described himself as a machine.  "So, your dad you thought was dead your whole life?  Turns out maybe he was just in prison?  Why are you acting so weird do something normal like say the times tables I'm freaking out!"
  
• What a lovely study in contrast: Mr. Lorry's timid brown machine and the woman in red--apparently Miss Manette's servant or nurse--all physicality and life and hollering.  I wish she was planning to stick around, but it's hard to argue with her logic about why she was set down on an island.

Takeaways: 

BOMBSHELL. "Recalled to life" and "buried alive" referred to being freed from a (probably unjust) 18-year prison sentence, and for Miss Manette, this is a great shock as she was raised to believe that her father was dead.  (I'm curious about her life between the time Mr. Lorry brought her over from France to England and now; I'm also skeptical that she has any French accent at all if she moved to England at age two.)